With 4.5m votes in, election could be half over in FL. A look at the white, black and brown early vote

Election Day could already be half over in Florida before polling stations open at 7 a.m.

More
than 4.5 million people have voted early, which accounts for 38 percent
of the state’s 12 million registered voters and half of the ones likely
to cast a ballot.

Democrats have a lead in total ballots cast
over Republicans — 167,000 — but polls indicate Republican Mitt Romney
is in a better position than President Barack Obama.

Obama is worse off than he was four years ago. Depending on how
the data are sliced, his pre-Election Day lead could be half of what it
was in 2008.

Still, Democrats are up in early ballots.

“It’s
half-over, but it’s tied,” said Michael McDonald, a George Mason
University political science professor and early voting expert. “There’s
still another half to play.”

This is the tough half. If Obama wins Florida, he wins re-election.

The
campaigns will be phoning voters who don’t show up, providing rides and
keeping electronic tabs on bellwether precincts. It’s a massive numbers
game involving tens of thousands of grassroots volunteers and
data-mining techies monitoring the campaigns’ progress — or lack thereof
— in real time from headquarters in Chicago (Obama) and Boston
(Romney).

McDonald said this Florida election had a surprise:
Higher proportions of Republicans cast in-person early votes compared to
2008, and even higher percentages of Democrats cast absentee ballots,
which are typically mailed.

About 2.1 million absentee ballots
were cast statewide — in addition to 2.4 million in-person early votes.
The numbers show that, when it comes to voting, Florida has racial
divisions that play to each campaign’s strengths, according to an
analysis of preliminary voter data conducted by The Miami Herald and the
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting: